4 Most Common Security Threats to Businesses

Strength­en­ing the secu­ri­ty of your busi­ness is essen­tial for pre­vent­ing loss and cre­at­ing a safe envi­ron­ment for employ­ees, cus­tomers and guests. But for many busi­ness­es, it’s not always clear which threats pose the most dan­ger.

Theft is com­mon­ly cit­ed as a top con­cern regard­ing busi­ness secu­ri­ty. But there are dif­fer­ent types of theft, requir­ing busi­ness­es to imple­ment a mul­ti­lay­ered approach to their secu­ri­ty. With­out a full risk assess­ment, busi­ness­es are blind­ed to the var­i­ous inci­dents that can derail their oper­a­tions.

In this post, we look at 4 of the most com­mon busi­ness secu­ri­ty threats and how to com­bat them.

1) Internal theft

In retail envi­ron­ments, a com­mon assump­tion is that out­siders com­mit most thefts. But data shows inter­nal theft is just as much of a con­cern.

Fig­ures from the Retail Coun­cil of Cana­da show that employ­ees who steal from their employ­ers will take about $2,500 in cash or goods before they’re caught, where­as the aver­age theft by a cus­tomer is about $175. In total, employ­ee theft costs Cana­di­an busi­ness­es $1.4 bil­lion a year. No busi­ness own­er or man­ag­er wants to think their employ­ees are capa­ble of this theft. But it hap­pens all the time.

Busi­ness­es can help to pre­vent employ­ee theft by deploy­ing bet­ter busi­ness secu­ri­ty sys­tems, includ­ing sur­veil­lance cam­eras. The pres­ence of cam­eras alone can act as a deter­rence while pro­vid­ing clear video footage of what hap­pened if you dis­cov­er some­thing has been stolen.

2) Customer theft /shoplifting

Data from the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for Shoplift­ing Pre­ven­tion (based in the U.S.) finds that 1 in every 11 cus­tomers will attempt shoplift­ing. In Cana­da, this amounts to more than a bil­lion dol­lars of goods stolen from busi­ness­es every year.

This theft has been ris­ing in recent years, increas­ing by 25 to 40% in the sec­ond half of 2021. On aver­age, Cana­di­an gro­cery stores lose $3,000 to $4,000 in stolen goods week­ly. This is anoth­er area where secu­ri­ty cam­eras can help to curb theft sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Posi­tion­ing check­out areas and employ­ees near the exits can also help to reduce risk. Anoth­er effec­tive strat­e­gy is elim­i­nat­ing blind spots where cus­tomers can con­ceal goods or swap tags with­out being seen.

3) Afterhours break-ins and vandalism

Just because your busi­ness is closed and locked up for the night doesn’t mean you can be lax about your busi­ness secu­ri­ty. This is a prime time for thieves to tar­get retail estab­lish­ments.

There are sev­er­al vital steps to pre­vent these crimes. Out­door secu­ri­ty cam­eras, again, are an essen­tial deter­rent. So too is a com­mer­cial secu­ri­ty alarm sys­tem that will be acti­vat­ed if any­one attempts to gain entry through a door or win­dow. Com­mer­cial-grade locks, secu­ri­ty bars and win­dow film can make your busi­ness much hard­er to pen­e­trate or van­dal­ize.

4) Smoke & fire

Smoke and fire are arguably more of a threat to your secu­ri­ty than oth­er threats on this list. All it takes is one inci­dent to poten­tial­ly wipe out your entire busi­ness (and cause seri­ous harm to any­one on the premis­es).

This is why it’s impor­tant to inte­grate depend­able smoke and fire detec­tors with your busi­ness secu­ri­ty sys­tem. This will ensure that author­i­ties can be swift­ly and auto­mat­i­cal­ly dis­patched if a fire is detect­ed, sav­ing your busi­ness and lives.

Request a business security audit

Con­tact us at PROTECTION PLUS today to request a free com­pre­hen­sive audit of your busi­ness secu­ri­ty.